The Only Sound Is the Wind by Pascha Sotolongo

Author:Pascha Sotolongo
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2024-08-21T00:00:00+00:00

When Diana died, Abuela didn’t cry, at least not that Yulia observed, but she grew quiet, spent hours alone in her room, stiffened when Yulia tried to hug away her sorrow. “I’m okay, Yulia,” she said, her voice low, hands strong against her granddaughter’s small shoulders. “Diana was old and sick. I knew this was coming. It’s part of aging, nothing any of us can change.”

“But it’s sad, Tita,” Yulia said, thinking, for the first time in her life, that her grandmother looked very old.

“It is.”

Abuela went to the kitchen, Yulia following behind, and pulled from a high shelf the paella pan she’d found at Catholic Charities. “For the reception,” she said. Raúl had told her not to bother herself, that in América, friends and distant relatives brought food for the family, but Abuela would hardly trust Yulia’s health to strangers. At least there would be one dish her granddaughter could safely eat.

“I need some peppers and shrimps.” Abuela set the pan on the counter. “More Bijol too.” She looked at the clock and nodded toward the Winn-Dixie three miles away. “Go get ready,” she said.

In her tiny bedroom, Yulia stood before the mirror deliberating. She did not know her great-aunt Diana except as a skeletal figure in Raúl’s gauzy guestroom and felt little sadness at her passing. There was a bland sobriety in the face of death, but death as an idea more than as a resident of Yulia’s life. Death the mysterious force that stiffened legions of dragonflies, a pet parrot, several half-bald fighting cocks, some balseros when they struck out madly across the Florida Straits. Death was a disappearing agent, but it had never disappeared anything Yulia missed. Sometimes she thought she missed parents, but not her parents especially. She’d never known them. As a consequence of this, and of being young, she thought far more of what she hoped to acquire than of what she feared to lose.

She was sorry for her grandmother, though. Abuela had lost her sister, had been part of a family before Yulia even existed. Improbable images came to her: of her grandmother as a little girl with her own mother and abuelita, maybe playing with her sister in the yard, the two of them brushing each other’s hair. Diana’s death must have grieved Abuela, but with a dolor that kept its dry belly to the ground like a lizard.

Yulia drew her long braid forward, fingered the frayed tip that reached down past her ribs. It had been two weeks since she gave up the camisole, and no apple tart had come of it. Now, they were off again to the Winn-Dixie, Abuela for the bits of Cuba she could still grasp, Yulia for her heart-of-América tart, a thing she’d come to need to a degree that surprised her. Perhaps one day, when she was older and wiser, she’d understand why.

All she knew this day was that another chance had come. If she could find a worthy currency, she’d tender a trade so tempting it could not be refused.

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